Child Development and
Children’s Learning.
Introduction to Learning Theory.
Learning Outcomes
• To know how children develop and learn.
• To be aware of key theories of learning and
the implications of these for classroom
practice.
• TS 1, TS 4, TS 5, TS 7
A tiny human in a sperm,
drawn by a 17th century
microscopist
(Hartsoeker, 1694)
Maturation
• Sequential patterns of change that are governed by
instructions contained in the genetic code and shared by all
members of a species.
• Any maturational pattern is marked by 3 qualities:
 It is universal, appearing in all children across cultural
boundaries
 It is sequential, involving some pattern of unfolding skill or
characteristics
 It is relatively impervious to environmental influence
Stages of development:
• Periods of development which can be seen as
distinctly different from each other and during which
children experience the world in different ways.
• At each stage children have unique, characteristic
patterns of thought and behaviour
• Continuity - discontinuity
The whole child
The physical child
•Physical development
The social child
•Social and emotional development
•Spiritual and moral development
The thinking child
•Language Development
•Cognitive development
What develops?
Bruce and Meggitt (2006)
Physical development
Intellectual development
Language development
Emotional development
Social development
Spiritual development
The Physical Child –
Physical development
• Gross motor skills which use the large muscles of the body
• Fine motor skills which involve single limb movements and
precise movements of hands and fingers
• Locomotion
• Balance
• Hand-eye co-ordination
The social child – social development
• Concerns the child’s developing relationships with the people
around him or her.
• Vertical and horizontal relationships
• Attachment
• Social cognition
• Emotional intelligence
• Interpersonal and Intrapersonal intelligences
The social child – emotional
development
• Is concerned with the child’s developing ability to
understand emotions, both his own and those of
others
• Impulse control
• Self-concept
• Self-esteem
• Personality
The Social child –
Spiritual and moral development
• The developing sense of relationship with
self, relating to others ethically, morally and
humanely and a relationship with the
universe
• Piaget – moral realism, moral relativism
• Kohlberg – pre-conventional, conventional
and principled morality
The Thinking Child –
Language development
• ‘Inside-out’ theories – we are born with a language
making capacity
• ‘Outside-in’ theories
- imitation
- reinforcement
- constructivist; language
development is part of the
broader process of cognitive
development.
Four main areas of language
competence
• Phonology
• Semantics
• Syntax
• Pragmatics
The Thinking Child –
Intellectual or Cognitive development
Learning can be seen as:
‘Relatively permanent changes in behaviour
or in potential for behaviour that result from
experience.’
(Lefrancoise, 1999)
The Thinking Child –
Intellectual or Cognitive development
Learning can be considered as the process by
which:
•
•
•
•
Knowledge
Concepts
Skills
Attitudes
o Acquired
o Understood
are
o Applied
o Extended
(Pollard, 2008)
Operant conditioning
B.F.Skinner
Rat in Skinner Box
ImplicationMore pressing
Consequences(food reward)
Stimulus (cage)
Response (lever)
Child in the classroom
Implication
(Child responds in
Future)
Consequences
(Teacher rewards
Child)
Stimulus
(Teacher asks question)
Response
(Child gives correct answer)
Pedagogy
‘Science of teaching’
Oxford English Dictionary
Pedagogy
Learning
and learners
Teaching
Curriculum
Break and reading!
What is learning?
‘Learning can be considered as the process
by which knowledge, concepts, skills and
attitudes are acquired, understood applied
and extended…Learning is partly a cognitive
process, and partly social and affective.’
Pollard (2008)
What is learning?
‘Learning is provoked. Learning occurs in a
specific situation, at a specific moment, or
when a specific problem needs to be tackled.
People help children to learn, by creating
environments and atmospheres which
promote learning.’
Bruce and Meggitt (2006)
Learning theories
• Behaviourism
• Constructivism
• Social constructivism
Behaviourist theory
• A behaviour followed by a reinforcing
stimulus results in an increased probability
of that behaviour occurring in the future
• Aversive stimuli – something we find
unpleasant or painful
• Behaviourists cast learners in a passive role
• Extrinsic – Intrinsic motivation
Constructivist theory
• People learn through an interaction between
thinking and experience, and through the
development of more complex cognitive structures.
• Jean Piaget – placed action and self-directed
problem solving at the heart of learning and
development
• Accommodation and Assimilation
Piaget’s Stages of Development
• Sensori–motor
0-2 yrs
• Pre-operational
a) pre-conceptual
b) intuitive
2-4 yrs
4-7 yrs
o Concrete operations 7-12 yrs
o Formal operations
12 yrs
Intellectual / Cognitive
development
Cognition
‘Knowing…distinct from emotion’
Oxford English Dictionary
Jean Piaget
Swiss, clinical psychologist
1896-1980
Piaget’s theory:
Stages of cognitive development
Piaget’s stages of cognitive
development
Sensori-motor (Birth-2 yrs)
Pre-operational (2-7 years)
Concrete operational (7-11 years)
Formal operational (11 years and up)
Piaget
Schema
Adaptation
Assimilation and Accommodation
Constructivism
• 3 Mountains video
Challenges to Piaget’s Theory
‘Human sense’
Donaldson M (1984) Children's Minds London;
Fontana.
Wood D (1998) How Children Think and Learn
(2nd edition) Oxford; Blackwell.
Social Constructivist theory
• Children as active learners
• Significance of social processes
• Vygotsky
• Appropriate intervention by more knowledgeable
others
• Zone of Proximal Development
The zone of proximal development
‘ the distance between the actual
developmental level as determined through
problem solving and the level of potential
development as determined through problem
solving under adult guidance or in
collaboration with more capable peers’
(Vygotsky, 1978)
The Zone of Proximal Development
Potential development
Appropriate
intervention
Actual development
‘Scaffolding’ children’s learning - Bruner
Scaffolding has distinctive aspects:
•
Recruitment – engage the interest and motivation of the child
•
Reduction – simplify the task by reducing the number of acts
needed to reach a solution (manageable chunks)
•
Direct maintenance – encouragement
•
Marking critical features – highlight features of the task that are
relevant
•
Demonstration - modelling
Bruner
All learning should move through three set phases:
• Enactive – by doing (sensori-motor)
• Iconic – pictorial representation (concrete
operations)
• Symbolic – abstract representation (formal
operations)
• The spiral curriculum
What is a learning style?
• An individual’s preferred method of
learning
• Estimated to be over 80 learning style
models
The brain
• Left Hand Side
– logical
• Right Hand Side
– affective
• Greenfield
– Neurotransmitter connections
Multiple intelligences
• Gardner
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Linguistic intelligence
Logical-mathematical intelligence
Musical intelligence
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
Spatial intelligence
Inter-personal intelligence
Intra-personal intelligence
VAK
•
•
•
•
Dominant sense
Visual - sight
Auditory - sound
Kinaesthetic - touch
How do we learn?
Effective pedagogy includes
understanding of…
• Learning theory
– How learning happens
• Needs of individual learners
– Learning content
– Preferred approaches to learning